Steel
by geekprincess26
Summary: Sansa's skin had turned from porcelain to ivory to steel. One order from the Dragon Queen shattered it.
1. Shaken

Sansa could no longer remember when she had started shaking.

She realized it most acutely on the bad nights: the nights where she awoke to a bright moon and a month's worth of nightmares; the nights when she curled up panting in her sheets with her thoughts so jumbled that she half expected her lady mother to sink next to her on the bed and soothe her troubles away; the nights when she sent her maids scuttling to the kitchens to bring her tea to relax her muscles so that they would not snap her bones.

The nightmares' potency provoked an uncontrollable need for her to fight them with the few pleasant memories she could still summon that were still almost equally potent. Of course, they could never force the nightmares away, but they could help her hold the terror at bay long enough for the maids to bring her tea.

Rickon's singing laugh; Robb's tumble into the creek when he charged Jon too enthusiastically when they were playing knights; the giggle Bran only produced when Arya made cross-eyed faces at him; Father cracking one of his rare smiles when she presented him with a carefully cross-stitched cloak on his name day; Mother's delight over the bouquet of roses Sansa had spent an hour arranging into the shape of a Tully fish - they were real, and they had happened, and they had stitched themselves into Sansa's heart before the shaking started. Before mad things happened and mad rulers flayed Westeros into ruin and mad dragons flew into the North and madder Walkers smashed the Wall to pieces and the maddest of them all drove his sword through Arya's heart. Before all she had left were Bran, Jon, the splendidly unpredictable Dragon Queen, and the nightmares. And the shaking.

For a long time, Sansa had thought the shaking had begun the day she had watched as Ser Ilyn Payne slashed her father's head off of his body and left her alone with monsters for the first of many times. Years later, she had speculated that perhaps it had started earlier, on the day her father had beheaded Lady. No, the day when Cersei Lannister had made Father behead Lady, and King Robert had done nothing about it, and even Father, her brave, strong, wise, wonderful father, could not protect her. Lately, Sansa had begun to wonder if all along it hadn't begun even earlier, on the day that Joffrey Baratheon and his cursed family had first darkened her family's door and brought with them some strange, destructive, terrible force that had torn her away from her beloved family forever.

But, whenever it had started, the shaking had never really stopped.

Sansa, of course, had become a master at hiding it. Shaking meant weakness, and weakness made one easy fodder for the Lannisters and Boltons and every other predator under the sun. Porcelain dolls broke far too easily, so she gradually constructed a mask of ivory to hide her tear-streaked face when in the compan of others. Usually, she could wear the ivory skin until she was in bed and utterly alone, until she could scream into the pillows and smash her fists against the mattress and pretend, if any prying maids caught her, that she was having nightmares. By that time, it had become the truth. Some nightmares came while she was asleep and others while she was awake, but they were all nightmares no matter when they came.

Sometimes, though, the skin cracked. It cracked during the horrible minutes when those depraved thugs had cornered her in the alley and the Hound had been barely in time to rescue her. It cracked when Joffrey threatened during her very wedding feast to finish the task those thugs had started, and just a few minutes later when she'd begun to undress before Lord Tyrion in her chambers. It cracked again when she learned of Robb's and her mother's brutal deaths, and again when Petyr Baelish first found her and spirited her out of the city. It cracked far too many times again - when her cousin smashed her snow-built Winterfell, when her Aunt Lysa's madness erupted, when her nerves and body froze in front of the moon door, and when she was called in front of the lords of the Vale to give her account to them. It had cracked nearly to the point of breaking before she'd finally confessed her real name. Once she had done so, the Vale lords' faces had filled with pity and wonder instead of anger. Their sternness had melted into kindness, and she'd almost stopped shaking for once. But the the lords had let her go with Petyr, and Petyr had led her into the Boltons' den at Winterfell, and Ramsay Bolton's monstrosities had made Cersei's schemes and Lysa's madness sound like mewling kittens in her memory. She had nearly come undone that first horrible night, and on many of the nights after, until one night, halfway numb from illness, she'd discovered that sometimes he would hurt her less if she shook less.

So she fashioned a skin of steel. It preserved her through Ramsay's worst atrocities, through her impossible flight from Winterfell, through her and Jon's even more impossible quest to regain the North. It gave her the will to stare into Ramsay's bloodshot eyes as his hounds tore into their final feast, the nerve to push past Petyr as he spouted the poisonous dreams by which she once would have been so easily ensnared, the stomach to strike the killing blow into his chest when he'd tried to take a dagger to Jon in the crypt, and the courage to leave Bran at Winterfell and face down the wights at Jon's side.

But all the time, she had been shaking.

She had shaken as Queen Daenerys and the dragons had thundered onto the battlefield beside her and Jon. She had shaken with sobs over Arya's dead body, the sobs she'd been too numb to muster at Rickon's burial after the battle for Winterfell. She had shaken as she'd begged Jon and Bran to forgive her for tripping over the dead wight's hand, which had left Arya to strike the Night's King alone and die by his blade at the moment he'd died at the edge of Needle's. She had shaken when she, Jon, and Bran had said their farewells to Daenerys and her dragons, when one of them glared at her with eyes as bright and piercing as Arya's, which though forever closed had not stopped taunting her conscience. She had shaken every day after that no matter how many warm baths she took, no matter how many fires Jon had had the servants light on her behalf, no matter how many blankets she stole from the spare bedrooms to cover herself when she sat at the council meetings with Jon and Bran or sat in her solar trying to knit more clothes for the children orphaned on the Battlefield of the Dawn.

It had taken her months to reach the end of one day and realize that she had not shaken during it, whether from nightmares or chills or anything else. Bran had said at dinner that it was the first time he had seen her smile since before she had left Winterfell for the last battle. She had graced him with another smile then, and he had promptly turned to Jon and announced that together they could perhaps coax a smile out of even his grumpy face, and they had all laughed together, however carefully.

Sansa had had no nightmares that night, and when she awoke she thought that perhaps, in another week or so, she would go a day without shaking again, and perhaps after a while, ensconced in Winterfell with her brother and cousin, she would be calm enough to stop shaking even more than one day a week. Perhaps.

The next day, the Dragon Queen's messengers had arrived to summon Jon and Sansa to the Red Keep, and Sansa had begun shaking again. It had gotten so bad by the day they'd left Winterfell that Jon had raised one dark eyebrow and asked if she was sure she did not wish for more blankets to cover her as she rode. She had turned him down as politely as she could, but by the third day on the road south he had gotten concerned enough to ask her if she needed a maester, and she had gritted her teeth and said she'd take the blankets as long as they came with no more questions from him.

She'd managed well enough after that until the day after they first arrived at the Red Keep. Daenerys, never one to spend much time on small talk, had met privately with Sansa and Jon and without prelude informed them of her healer's recent confirmation that she was in fact barren and would remain so for the rest of her days. Naturally, the queen had said as though announcing the next night's dinner menu, although she had respected her nephew's refusal to mount the Iron Throne and even his odd desire to remain in the North as regent to King Bran, she could no longer overlook his lack of a wife or heir. When Jon finally opened his mouth, Daenerys had arched one blonde eyebrow at Jon's pointed look - perhaps the only outward characteristic, Sansa had reflected, that the two had in common - and tilted her golden head in a gesture that Sansa had quickly learned brooked no protest, even from her nephew. She understood that Jon did not care for the South, she had said, and she also understood that he would wish to disrupt his life at Winterfell as little as possible. Therefore, why should he not marry a lady who herself already lived at Winterfell - his cousin Sansa, the most beautiful and noble-blooded lady in the North?

She turned to Sansa with a smile of steel as she said it, and Sansa could feel her own steel skin shattering. Queen and courtesy and honor be damned, she had turned and fled and not stopped fleeing until she had reached her chambers high in the Keep's northernmost tower. Scarcely had she reached it when she had begun vomiting violently into her chamber pot.

After the battle had been won and the Dragon Queen had returned south and left her and Jon and Bran alone, she had dared to hope that she could escape another marriage for the foreseeable future, and perhaps altogether. Her brother and cousin, she knew, had spent the past year writing refusal after refusal of offers from lord after lord for her hand in marriage. That is, she reminded herself as she bent closer to the chamber pot to compensate for the next wave of bile rushing upward from her stomach, Jon wrote the refusals and Bran signed them. Bran, after all, was still young and still loved trees more than council chambers, and Jon, after all, understood far better than Bran or anybody else why Sansa would shake whenever Winterfell received yet another missive begging him to let her become yet another lord's wife. During one particularly bad bout of the shaking, she had admitted to Jon that she would sooner fall on Longclaw and take her place beside Arya in the crypts than chance being at the mercy of a man who would treat her with any fraction of Ramsay Bolton's cruelty. She had apologized to Jon the morning after her outburst, but he had only shaken his head and assured her that she had nothing to be sorry for and nothing about which to worry, because he and Bran and Longclaw would guard her very well.

How great was the irony, Sansa thought as the bile left her stomach. Not a month ago, she had thought that the shaking might lessen, that the skin of steel she had begun forming so long ago had worked. But now the dragon queen had done to Jon's vow to keep her from yet another forced marriage what the lion queen had done to her father's ability to protect her from the terrifying reality of her first betrothal. It did not matter for the moment that her marriage would be to Jon and not a cruel stranger; marriage was still marriage, and heirs must still be had, and thinking of what it would take to get them, whether at the hand of Jon or another, made her stomach send up more vomit. The skin of steel had shattered, and she did not know if she had the strength to build a harder one around it.

So engulfed was she in her shaking and her vomit that at first she failed to feel the hand drawing her hair off of the chamber pot to hold it away from her face. It was only when she felt another hand's gentle rub to her back - one she could have sworn belonged to her mother, back when she was a girl - that she turned and glimpsed a face much more masculine, but just as worried and just as kind and just as concerned.

Between the flush to her cheeks and the remnants of vomit leaving her stomach and the shaking - oh, the shaking - the ivory cracked and splintered as surely as had the steel, and for a moment she was made of porcelain again, and one of the tears her eyes had squeezed into being as she had vomited trickled down her cheek.

She shook hard enough in that moment to shatter, but Jon's hands held her steady, and his voice whispered soothing _shush-shush_ sounds next to her ear. Slowly she began to breathe again, and the shaking began to subside, and when she dared a glimpse at Jon's eyes, they were as gentle as Joffrey's and Tyrion's and Petyr's and Ramsay's had never been, as gentle as Lady's eyes had been right up until Father had killed her on the day when the shaking had begun.

But the shaking stopped, and she no longer vomited, and her hands relaxed their grip on the chamber pot. And when Jon helped her up and put a blanket around her, she almost felt warm.


	2. Sold

"I'll talk to her, Sansa," Jon had said.

He had kept his word, too, in spite of her snapping at him like a dog at a fox's throat after all of his kindness to her, after Daenerys Targaryen had told him he should marry her and she had dashed into her chambers to shake and panic and vomit. He had fumbled his way around her room until he had found clean cloths and water for her face and hair, and he had piled her bed high with blankets and called one of her maids to fetch tea and asked her repeatedly if she was sure she did not need a maester. The fourth time he had asked, one of her frayed nerves had finally snapped. She needed no maester, for she did not need to be coddled any more like the little bird Cersei Lannister had kept in this very same cage so many years before. When she opened her mouth to tell Jon this, however, a throat full of tears had replaced the words on the tip of her tongue, and when she swallowed them down, she made an ugly noise somewhere between a gag and a snarl. That only angered her, but at least it made it possible for her to speak to Jon without bursting into tears like the stupid, fragile little bird who had lived there before.

"I will not be cared for by her," she had snapped, "and I will not be played with by her like child's toy. I care not if she is the Queen! She cannot sell me off or barter me away, or – or – sacrifice me like a pawn in a chess game!"

Jon had winced almost imperceptibly then, but Sansa had not heeded him.

"When Petyr Baelish – " she spat the name off of her tongue like a lemon gone bad, or a lick of mud, or a particularly horrible curse phrase, or all three put together – "sold me off to Ramsay Bolton – " she spat even harder – "and Theon got me away, I told myself I would never let anybody sell me off again." Jon had winced, more visibly this time, and Sansa had paused, but still she had not stopped. "And nobody will. I will be nobody's pawn and nobody's bargaining chip, queen though she may be. She can set her dragons on me if she likes, but she is madder than the rumors say if she thinks I will allow her to play me in this fashion, like one of those – one of those slaves they keep in that awful place she came from."

At the mention of slaves, Jon's jaw had twitched more noticeably, and a hurt look had flashed across his face, although the look had vanished within the time it had taken Sansa to blink. She had said no more about slaves or anything else, however, before Jon had dipped his head the way he always did when about to take leave of her.

"I'll talk to her, then," he had said, and Sansa could hear in his voice the hurt that had so briefly dominated his face.

"Jon, no." The guilt had risen inside of Sansa as the had the bile not an hour before, and she had had lifted her hand as if to stay Jon's departure, even though he had been much too far away for her to lay it on his arm. "I – I'm – I shouldn't have – she won't – "

Jon had spared her one last resolute glance. Apparently, he and his aunt had two expressions in common. "I'll talk to her, Sansa. Good night," he'd said, and left.

The great wooden door had closed behind him with its customary thud, and Sansa had almost begun shaking again, but the door opened again to admit three maids, and so she had remained still as the girls had undressed her and shaken her head resolutely when they had asked if they could bring her anything else. Despite the tea they had brought her, she had slept very little that night, and when she had slept, she had discovered a new nightmare, one in which both Jon and the Dragon Queen had ridden their dragons and chased her down and cornered her like a wild rabbit and advanced upon her with twin swords emitting flames that matched their wild eyes.

Sansa awoke then, her muscles tightened and trembling, to see the faint shimmer of the setting moon outside of her window. She knew she would get no more sleep, so she summoned her maids to dress her and bring her another cup of tea. While she was sipping it, she wondered if she should have her maids dress her in the black and scarlet silk gown she had been reserving for the queen's grand feast in three days' time, just to see if it would please the queen and give her the slightest inclination to relent and tell Sansa that she need not marry Jon after all, and then she shook her head and thought better of it. Instead, she had her maids lace her into a silver linen kirtle and a deep gray gown with fine silver trim, and when they finished braiding her hair, she reached into the little wooden box sitting beside her trunk and fastened at her own throat the fine silver brooch, carved in the shape of a direwolf's head, that Bran had had made for her on her last name day. She sent the maids after one of Daenerys's household valets, and by the time he arrived to escort him to the household's private breakfast rooms, she had managed to pieced together a smile, one she would need sorely if the queen had gotten there first.

The room, however, was empty when Sansa arrived and remained that way over the next hour while she nibbled her way through a biscuit and drank two mugs of the coffee the queen imported from the Arbor every month, all the while wondering if Jon had spoken to the queen yet and when the queen would summon her to discuss the marriage, as surely she must. The coffee kept Sansa awake but, in the absence of any word from the queen, did nothing to help her organize her scattered thoughts, so she forced down half of another biscuit before retiring to her solar to sew. The familiar motions of fingers against string against cloth helped to keep the shaking at bay, but her thoughts dashed from the swords in her nightmare to the queen's steel-eyed smile at the previous night's dinner to Ramsay beside the heart tree in the godswood, and her hands tightened on the needle, and the thread knotted and snapped beneath it, and the next thread snapped twenty minutes after that.

The luncheon hour passed slowly, and Sansa's thread broke twice more before she laid aside her work and forced down some cold fish and a pomegranate, and she had her maids rearrange her hair, and while they did, she sipped more tea and tried to remember the names of that evening's dinner guests so that she could strike up a conversation with one of them if the queen had still refused to speak to her. However, not an hour had passed after luncheon time when one of Daenerys's valets knocked on her door and extended the queen's invitation to a private audience that afternoon, and just over an hour and hundreds of harried stitches later, two Dothraki guards outfitted flawlessly in Targaryen black and crimson arrived to escort Sansa to the pillared stone terrace sprawled in front of the queen's apartments. Sansa tried frantically during the ten-minute walk to conjure up some unassailable reason she and Jon could not marry, or, failing that, a superior marriage alliance for Jon, which brought back the prior night's guilt. All her mind would do other than feel guilty, however, was race like Lady had raced Nymeria back in Winterfell before the world had dissolved into madness, and Sansa had barely had the time to summon the smile she had practiced on the valet that morning before she found herself curtsying before the dragon queen and heard her dismiss the guards.

"I trust you are feeling less ill today than last night," the queen offered by way of greeting after Sansa had murmured the customary, "Your Grace." It was as close as she was wont to draw to small talk, which made Sansa uncertain whether to be relieved or wary. She merely nodded, however, and the queen nodded back.

"And I trust my servants are seeing to all you need," she added. Sansa nodded again.

"Very well, Your Grace," she replied, taking care to keep her voice as smooth and modulated as the lion queen's had ever been. "Your hospitality is appreciated. As is your time," she added, and let the dry tone in her voice sit between them as the servants arrived with trays of fruit and cheese and bread and a pitcher of wine. Not until they had left did the queen speak.

"Time spent finishing an unfinished matter is well spent," she replied and plucked a grape from one of the trays before retraining her gaze on Sansa. "I trust, after all, that you wish to speak to me for the same reasons my nephew did this morning."

Sansa barely lifted an eyebrow. "If you mean that he wished to continue the discussion you initiated about our marriage," she answered, taking extra care not to stumble over the last word, "then you are correct."

The queen must have expected Sansa to continue, for she raised her own eyebrow more than barely when Sansa did not speak again.

"I have already heard my nephew's opinion," she finally stated. "I assume you have your own."

Sansa turned toward the gardens again. Before she could open her mouth to speak, she saw a huge winged figure streaking across the sky beyond the gardens and over the cliffs. Sansa, rising from her chair to see it better, could just make out the glints of green on its belly and of gold on its wings in the afternoon sun, and she remembered just enough from their tour of the palace's dragon pits the previous night to recognize the figure as Rhaegal, one of the queen's three dragons. No sooner had she thought of it than she turned to see Daenerys, now standing just behind her, throw back her head and laugh in a loud and very unqueenly fashion.

"He is in a fouler mood than I thought," she said once her laughter had abated, and Sansa could tell that Jon had somehow impressed her. "The fouler, of course, for his skill teaching him that he more of a dragon than he thought. A pity. He would make a fine rider if he did not insist on staying North."

Sansa's questions were clearly written on her face, for the queen laughed again.

"He came to me this morning," she said, and seated herself as Rhaegal spiraled over the cliffs and beyond their view. "He asked not to marry you, and when I disagreed with him, he left to go flying with Rhaegal."

Sansa could not help then but agree with the queen, even though she did not say so. Jon would have to be in a foul mood indeed to go riding on a dragon. He hated most reminders of his father's family, and only reluctantly had he mounted Rhaegal a few times during the queen's prior sojourn in the North. At the end of every ride, Jon had descended the dragon with a flash of excitement in his eyes that he could not quite mask, but he had also been paler than usual, and when Bran had asked him about it, Jon had grimaced and replied that the experience was just as well left to Daenerys and the South.

But if Jon had been in such a foul mood, that meant that the dragon queen was still set on having him marry Sansa, and Sansa's itched to grasp the direwolf brooch at her throat. She curled it into a fist at her side instead.

"Perhaps," she said, attempting to select her words as carefully as the dragon queen, who had turned back to the platter, was picking over the bunches of grapes that lay on it, "his mood might not be as foul were he to marry a noble-blooded lady of his own choosing. " That brought the queen's gaze off of the grapes and onto her, but Sansa did not pause. "After all, I am sure he can find a woman of high lineage who has not been twice married or attainted for treason."

The queen tossed a cluster of grapes back onto the platter, and it took a moment for her to exchange her annoyed look for her usual regal expression.

"And you have a copy of my proclamation that reversed the attainder," she replied, "along with the copy of your annulment decree from my Hand. Your second husband is dead, and if I am told aright, your brother, the King, can produce no heirs. You will inherit Winterfell and the rule of the North from him." She set one hand on the table and pointed squarely at the platter with the grapes on it, then set the pointing finger of her other hand against it for emphasis. "Moreover, you stand to inherit the Riverlands from your uncle should he remain childless." She pushed her middle finger onto the table, leaving two fingers pointing at the platter. "And your cousin, Robin Arryn, rules the Vale." She ticked down her ring finger. "Which gives you and therefore the man you marry sway over the larger half of Westeros." She straightened her little finger next to the ledge of the platter. "Finally," she said, "you are the daughter of Catelyn Stark, a fertile woman if ever one was." She turned and narrowed her eyes at Sansa. "All of which means that both I and the many lords who have asked my nephew for your hand in marriage, unlike yourself, fail to see your prior misfortunes as the impediments to your desirability."

Sansa's hand drifted toward her brooch again, but again she willed it down and settled instead for biting her tongue.

"Of course," the queen continued, "my nephew and I have received as many offers and more for his own hand. I would see both matters resolved now, before any disagreements over it divide the remaining houses and cause a bloodshed that Westeros cannot afford. I am its queen, and I have a duty to maintain peace, now more than ever." She glanced out toward the gardens before turning back to Sansa. "I also have a duty to provide the people with a strong, fertile throne. I cannot give them one if my nephew and I fail to have children, or if we must constantly look North over our shoulders over an heir to that throne who is not bound in some way to ours." Her eyes, which had softened when she had gazed at the garden, narrowed again. "Which means, as you are well aware, that you and no other will suit my nephew as his bride, much as he and no other will suit you as your bridegroom."

Sansa looked the queen straight in the eye. "I am aware," she replied levelly. "I am also aware that every stratagem a monarch devises must have an alternative, in case it should fail. That is, if I died without an heir, or if my brother the King were to forbid me to marry, Jon would still need a suitable wife – " she paused to pluck a grape off of the rapidly emptying platter – "whether it be my brother's third cousin Lyra Stark, who would be his heir after me – " she plucked a second grape to accompany the first in the palm of her left hand – "or either of the Karstark sisters to whom our crown would pass next – " and a third – "or another of the beautiful young ladies whose fathers and brothers have offered their hands to my cousin." She relieved the emptiest vine of its second-to-last grape. "Of course, my brother, as King, could legitimize Benjen Snow, our second cousin once removed, and if Jon prefers a bride other than myself, he could make a pact with Benjen for their children to marry and form an alliance that way." She picked the final grape off of the vine and popped it into her mouth.

One corner of the queen's mouth twisted upward, along with the opposite brow. It reminded Sansa of the odd grimace the lion queen had displayed when she was about to either laugh at someone or have him thrown into the dungeons. But the dragon queen did neither, and Sansa kept on chewing her grape.

The queen nodded slowly before she spoke again. "Or," she replied, "if anything were to happen to my nephew, you would still need a suitable husband. I had considered, for instance, Gendry Baratheon of the Stormlands, or Harry Hardyng of the Vale – even, were the circumstances right, my Hand the Lord Tyrion, would he agree to wed you again."

Sansa was glad then that she had finished eating her grape, or her swallow might have forced her to choke it down. Daenerys took no notice.

"As it is," she continued, "I am told you wanted nothing to do with any of them or any other man who made you an offer, and all of that means nothing in any event, for nothing has befallen my nephew except a poor temper. Therefore, you must marry him or none at all, and as much as my nephew tells me you prefer the second alternative, it is not a choice you or I can afford to make."

Sansa drew herself up in her chair as stiffly as she could. "Yes, I understand the lack of alternative," she replied. "As do you, no doubt, after having your brother arrange for your own marriage to the lord of the Dothraki when you lived in Essos."

The golden light that flashed briefly through the queen's eyes might have been a trick of the afternoon sunlight, but even if it were, Sansa knew she had traversed well beyond the border of dangerous territory. Ramsay's face would not stop flashing before her own eyes, however, and she pressed on. "I also know you understand the difficulties that come from such arrangements. I was sorry to hear of the losses that befell you, but when I heard of them, I knew you might understand the desire to suffer any fate other than undergoing such a situation again."

The queen rose abruptly from her chair and turned toward the gardens. Sansa remained in her chair until the other woman turned back to her, this time with a light flush on each of her pale cheeks.

"Yes, I suffered losses," she answered, and the steel had returned to her voice and to her face, and the look she had given Jon the night before, when he had tried to protest he announcement that he must have a wife, sat on her face again, only darker and steelier. "But from those losses came my gains. I gained my children." She inclined her head toward the sky, where Sansa once again spotted Rhaegal soaring in the distance, before turning back to Sansa. "I gained the queenship of the Meereen and of Westeros. And were I to be given the chance, I would undergo the same losses in order to have what I gained. As, I have no doubt, will you and my nephew alike once you have been married for some time. I have faith in any case that your brother, the King, will understand the gains your marriage will make for the North. He will not refuse my request." She arched her eyebrow again, as if daring Sansa to contradict her.

Sansa did not. Her gaze did not waver from the queen's, but her hand reached up and clutched her direwolf brooch, and her jaw tightened, and she bit her tongue behind her teeth until they drew blood out of it. It took her a moment to feel the pain in her tongue, and when she did, her teeth moved to her lips instead of stopping, and she felt a drop of blood from her lip spill down her chin, and her shoulders sagged, and the dragon queen finally nodded.

"He is said to be far wiser than my brother, after all," she went on, "and I look forward to meeting him at court. If the children you bear my nephew gain his wits, my nephew's strength, my diplomacy, and your family's fertility, they and my children may yet make your losses and mine worth the price for Westeros."

Her eyes hardened each time she said the word "children," and even her stony face could not quite mask the pain in them. Sansa thought she would still trade her womb for the queen's in a moment were it possible, and knew the queen would have agreed to the trade, and barely stifled a wild bark of laughter at the irony of its being the one thing they both wished for, but she said nothing of it. Instead she nodded as briefly as she could, and the queen seated herself again and signaled for the servants.

As Daenerys had predicted, Jon rode Rhaegal until sunset. When he appeared for dinner, he was still in a foul mood, which became fouler still when his aunt summoned him and Sansa to yet another private audience afterward. He began glaring at her as soon as the door to her private solar had closed, but she merely raised her eyebrow again as she addressed him.

"Lady Sansa has agreed to wed you, Jon," she said, "which means that the condition you demanded earlier has been met."

Jon's eyes darted to Sansa's for a moment, and Sansa saw an anger in them that would have made her younger self cringe, but she also caught a flicker of the concern that she had seen when he had held her throughout her horrible bout of vomiting the night before. But it was only a flicker, and it disappeared beneath Jon's anger as he rounded once again on his aunt. Daenerys's eyes flashed again with the golden look Sansa remembered from that afternoon on the terrace, but Jon's eyes flashed silver right back at her, as they did on occasion when he was exceptionally upset.

"I will speak to Sansa about this alone, Aunt Daenerys," he said. The queen narrowed her eyes at the use of the familiar title, but Jon ignored her and turned back to Sansa. "With your approval, of course, Sansa."

Sansa could do nothing but nod. She watched the other woman turn on her heels and barely managed a curtsey to match Jon's tight bow before the queen had swept out of the room. The guard closed the door, and Sansa turned to stare at the flames dancing in the room's marble fireplace and feel the drops of sweat dancing down her back. She almost wished she had worn her silk gown this morning, for it would have been lighter than her linen dress, and she would not be feeling the pinpricks of heat running up and down her arms, and her face would not be as red as her hair. Slowly, she backed farther away from the fireplace and willed herself to breathe more slowly, the way she had taught herself to do so many years ago, so that the flush on her face and limbs would lighten and she would not shake, at least not outwardly where Jon could see it. So great was her concentration that she did not hear Jon saying her name until he accompanied his voice with a light touch to her shoulder. She whirled to face him and felt her flush deepen to where it had begun.

"You are – are you all right?" he asked. Sansa nodded mutely.

Jon's eyes hardened again. "Did you truly agree to this?" he said, and Sansa lifted her chin and tightened her jaw and drew in another deep breath.

"Yes," she finally answered, but received only his raised eyebrow in reply.

"She is rather determined about it," Sansa continued, and she saw the silver flash in Jon's eyes again, and found herself hastening to find something more to say. "And I could not argue with her political reasons for – for what she wants us to do. I tried listing other matches that would align with her reasoning, but she would have none of them." She folded her arms across her stomach and bit her lip and felt her voice lower to cover its quiver. "She also said she was sure Bran would not disagree with her idea."

Jon's eyes widened the way Nymeria's had when Joffrey had attacked Arya on the Kingsroad back when they were children, before Lady had died, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides, and before Sansa could blink, he had crossed the room and slapped both of them against the marble mantelpiece. She watched his shoulders rise and fall, first rapidly, then more gradually. Sansa herself felt like a piece of marble, unable to move or speak, until Jon slowly turned to face her. His expression was inscrutable, and Sansa found herself hastening to speak again.

"Perhaps – well, perhaps you could have a different match, since you are after all her nephew and heir," she said. "If you were to prefer a different lady, the lords could declare Bran fit to rule on his own, and you could marry, and she might be persuaded to put off finding a match for me until he adjusts to ruling without a regent."

She did not believe the words even as she spoke them, and neither did Jon, for he shook his head and rubbed his right hand over his face, a gesture Sansa remembered her father doing when he had been particularly upset about something or discussing a serious dilemma with her mother.

"No," he said, and his voice was resigned rather than angry now. "You were right. She's set to have her way about this." He sighed and rubbed at his beard, and then his face began to redden such that even the light from the fireplace's flames could not disguise it.

"Unless," he said after a brief but awkward pause, "you would not have it, Sansa. If – I did not think – " He reached back to rub the nape of his neck, and it took him a few more moments to meet her eyes. "If there is another lord or any other man at all whom you would have, then you will have him, and I will find a way to explain it to my aunt."

Sansa's face flushed as red as had Jon's. "No," she replied, and Jon's eyes flicked back to the floor. Sansa looked curiously at the top of his head. "But – but, as I said before, if you were to want another lady, then – "

Jon's gaze snapped back up to hers. "No," he said as firmly as had she.

Sansa nodded. There was an uncomfortable pause, which Jon broke by taking a hesitant step toward her. He was close enough to touch her arm if he moved it just a few inches, but he made no move to do so, and Sansa breathed an inward sigh of relief, for she did not need to start trembling again.

"Sansa," Jon was saying by the time her breathing had evened, "I can talk to her again. Even if she disagrees, I might get her to delay for a time, and then – "

"No." Sansa had not planned to say the word with so much force, but out it came nonetheless. "That would only infuriate her more, and I would not chance her anger, not when it might fall on Bran." The tears entered her eyes, but she had learned that the quickest way to battle them sometimes was to speak on, and so she did. "You are right. She is set on having her way about this." She turned to face the door. "I suppose we ought to tell her we accept the arrangement."

For several moments Sansa could neither feel nor hear Jon move beside her. When he did, he strode so forcefully to the door that Sansa could feel the whoosh of air his sudden turnabout had created. Almost before it registered with Sansa's mind that he had reached the door, he flung it open and sent one of the guards scurrying to fetch the queen. Jon turned to stalk back from the door, and the look on his face was one Sansa had only seen once before, when she and Jon and Lyanna Mormont and their men had confronted Ramsay the day before they had taken back Winterfell, and Ramsay had told Jon how little he could wait to have Sansa back on the torture rack he had called his bed. When the dragon queen swept into the room, Jon directed the same look at her. For a moment she looked nonplussed, but then she raised her eyebrow and switched her gaze to Sansa, who did not blink.

"We have agreed to marry, Your Grace," she said.

Daenerys nodded and looked to her nephew. "You agree, nephew?" she said, and it was more a statement than a question.

"Aye," Jon replied and continued to glower at his aunt, who turned back to Sansa.

"Good," she said. "We can send a raven to your brother tomorrow, and then to those of the Northern lords whom he wishes to attend your wedding with him. They will need one month to prepare, and after that – how long do you suppose it would take your brother to travel here?" She directed the last question at Sansa, who had just reopened the wound on her tongue from their discussion earlier that day. She forced herself to swallow the blood so she could reply, but Jon spoke before she could.

"Bran will not come South with no Stark to stay in Winterfell," he said harshly, "nor will Sansa and I marry here." He cleared his throat after a few moments, and Sansa turned to see that his cheeks had reddened again. "Unless Sansa wishes it," he added.

The queen was now raising both of her eyebrows at her nephew, but Jon did not flinch, and neither did Sansa as she turn to address the queen.

"If you wish us to marry sooner rather than later, Your Grace," Sansa said, "it would probably take you and your court far less time to travel to Winterfell than it would for my brother to gather the Northern lords from their seats and journey here. You know that we have sufficient space there, and your court would enjoy our hot springs."

The queen was silent for a moment. "You have rebuilt your sept since I was there?" she finally asked. From the sound of Jon's weight shifting beside her, Sansa could tell that he knew as well as she that the queen already knew the answer to her own question.

"No," Sansa said at the exact same moment that Jon did. Sansa glanced at him, and his glare had lessened, but not by much. She inclined her head in the way they had decided meant Jon should continue back when they had visited the houses of the Northern lords in their bid for support in the campaign against Ramsay Bolton.

"We will marry in the godswood," he said, and his face suddenly flushed red as he added, "or in the place of Sansa's choosing."

Sansa belatedly wished then that she could in fact marry in Winterfell's sept, for she had married neither Tyrion Lannister nor Ramsay Bolton there. But the sept was in ruins and could not be repaired until the men finished their own half-repaired living quarters, which they had taken up in order to give their own finished chambers to the refugees who had streamed into Winterfell as the wights had stormed the North. In any case, marrying Jon in a sept would not to stage the same show of Northern unity with their lords as would marrying in the godswood.

"We are Northern, Your Grace," she finally said, "and our people will expect us to marry according to the Northern custom, as the Wardens of the North and the Kings in the North and their families have always done."

The queen narrowed her eyes at them both, but at last she nodded.

"You have already planned your departure for ten days hence," she said. "I and my court will follow three weeks from then. I will plan to arrive at Winterfell eight weeks from your departure."

Less than three months from that day, Sansa realized, and her knees felt weak, and her hand gravitated toward the direwolf brooch again, and it was all she could do to bring it back down to her side, and she could barely nod at the dragon queen, let alone speak.

But Jon spoke for her. "We will expect you then," he said. His words were clipped as they left his mouth, and Sansa knew without looking that he was staring at his aunt again the way he had stared at Ramsay. She felt the shaking coming on again and clenched her fists at her sides until her fingernails dug into her palms. She forced herself to focus on the queen, who was giving Jon a brief nod. He snapped a bow in her direction and turned to Sansa. His eyes were still blazing, but the concern had flickered back into them, and his voice was not ungentle when he said, "Good night, Sansa," and left the room.

Sansa waited the bare minimum of time dictated by protocol before making her own departure, but she was still surprised to find Jon standing in the hallway just around the corner from the queen's solar, halfway to the staircase up which she had fled the prior night.

"Sorry for startling you," he said, and Sansa saw that the concern had spread and melted away a good chunk of his glower, although he was still clearly unhappy. Sansa shook her head.

"It's no trouble," she answered, but her voice had sunk to a whisper, and Jon looked even more concerned when he reached out to touch her shoulder.

"Will you be all right, then?" he asked, and Sansa knew what he meant, but she did not feel particularly like vomiting at the moment, so she nodded and said, "Well enough," and then began to feel guilty as she had done that morning. After all, angry though he might be, Jon had chosen to insert himself as a buffer between her and the full ire of his aunt, and he had done what he could in a tight corner to ensure that she did not get all of her own way about the matter.

"What about you?" she asked, and Jon's shoulders slumped a little, but he did not withdraw his hand.

"Well enough," he replied, his words echoing hers, and one shoulder rose in a brief shrug. He opened and closed his mouth once or twice before he suddenly leaned forward, and Sansa's eyes closed, and she felt him press a kiss to her forehead. He finally released her shoulder, and when she opened her eyes, it was just in time to see him stride down the hall and out of her sight.


	3. Stones

That night, for the first time in her life, Sansa thanked the heavens for her nightmares, for it was the dreams that awoke her, shaking and covered with sweat, and sent her dashing to the double windows across from her bed. She threw them open to cool herself, but a warm breeze flowed in through the window instead of the stiff northern wind Sansa, in her half-awake state, had expected. What she would not have given for a proper blast of northern air, she thought, twirling one of the curtains to fan herself, not to mention that it would mean she was back in Winterfell with Bran –

"Bran!" Her brother's name flew out of her mouth more loudly than she had intended, and two of her maids came flying into the room, along with Lucas Mazin, who was one of the three men Jon had assigned before their journey South to guard Sansa exclusively. Sansa reassured them that she was well and merely wished to rise early. She waited until all of them had exited her room before donning a robe, lighting a lamp, setting it on the table in her solar, and retrieving her writing supplies from one of her trunks. She mixed the ink, all the while calling herself a hundred variations of idiot for not beginning to write the letter the moment she had arrived in her apartments the prior evening, and smoothed out the paper on the table's surface before dipping the quill into the inkpot.

 _Brother,_ she wrote before another round of self-cursing ensued. Of course Bran should learn about her impending marriage to Jon from her own hand before he received Daenerys's raven if at all possible, but a letter confirming such important news should certainly be written by both her hand and Jon's, in order to ease Bran's mind and those of the lords around him about any possibility of forgery or duress. Moreover, they would need to write at least one additional copy of the letter, and probably two, to be carried by different ravens in the event that any misfortune should befall one of the others.

Sansa sent one of the maids scurrying down the stairs to have Jon fetched from his quarters, then turned with a sigh to let the others dress her and braid her hair for the day. She and Jon would have to work quickly, after all, if their ravens were to leave the Red Keep before any that the dragon queen might send to Bran. As the maids laced her kirtle and entwined her braids, she silently composed a dozen different introductory sentences for her letter, none of them satisfactory, and when she sat at the table, fully dressed, to try her hand at more, she tried a dozen more, again without success.

Since she was alone in the solar, Sansa let a heavy sigh escape her lips. It was impossible, of course, to tell Bran of her upcoming marriage without surprising him, but she wished to believe it was still possible to convey the news without shocking him enough to send him into another spell of night terrors such as the ones he had suffered at intervals since his return to Winterfell from the far north just under two years ago. He had been unconscious and sick nearly to the point of death for his first three days there after arriving in the arms of a wearied and wind-burnt Howland Reed, but on the fourth morning he had awakened, and he and Lord Reed had related to a stunned Sansa and Jon the story of Eddard Stark's encounter with his dying sister at the Tower of Joy. That night, Bran's terrors had begun. Jon had stalked off to the godswood after Bran, having related his tale, had flatly refused to take Jon's place as King in the North, and he had remained there for a good portion of the night. That had left Sansa, who had fallen asleep in the large chair by Bran's bedside, to awaken to an empty bed and the sound of crying, which had brought her bursting into the hallway to find her brother dragging himself down the hall by his arms. Once the maester had arrived and Bran had been awakened, along with half the castle, Bran had tried to assuage her fears by telling her of the Three-Eyed Raven's warning that he might reasonably expect such things to happen while still trying to master his greensight.

"Don't worry too much, Sansa," he'd said, nudging her shoulder with his own as they sat on the edge of his bed together. "It's not as if I can actually walk around the halls, and do any real damage."

"Not funny, Brandon," she had retorted, using his full name for the first time in at least seven years, and Bran had actually grinned at her. However, the terrors, as he had predicted, had continued to trouble him at every so often, and they had always grown worse during times of great difficulty or change. Four of his manservants – two at a time for four hours each – were always stationed next to his bed every night during one of the terrors' bad streaks; for, as Sansa had quickly discovered, it took only one to lift him back into bed if he managed to get out, but both to awaken him if he began screaming, as he often did, and restrain his arms' thrashing while he regained consciousness. For two months after Bran had returned from beyond the Wall, and then again for another three months after the White Walkers' defeat, he had both crawled and screamed each night. He had borne his terrors with twice the dry humor and good grace that could be expected of any lad his age, but by the end of each stretch of months, he had grown dark circles under his eyes that would not disappear even at the height of the day, and he had lost so much weight that the maester had nearly had to force-feed him.

Bran's bad spells had taken their toll on Jon and Sansa as well, for each of them had always awakened every other hour to check on him and, in the case of whomever was awake exactly four hours after he had gone to bed, to oversee the new pair of manservants taking over the watch for the remainder of the night. Furthermore, Jon had taken over management of the council meetings Bran had missed due to the maester's strict orders that the young King make up for his lost sleep during the days. He and Sansa together had ensured that ravens were received, petitions heard, and ledgers read during Bran's absences, which had only increased after Bran had discovered that hours, even overnight stays, in the godswood did more to alleviate his symptoms than any tea or medicine the maester could brew. But now Jon was not at Winterfell, and neither was Sansa, and as much as she trusted Lord Davos and Lord Manderly, whom they had all agreed would aid Bran in managing the castle's affairs if Bran should need any assistance, she still worried about his health should the news of his sister's involuntary marriage to his cousin trouble his mind enough to bring on more of the terrors.

So engrossed was Sansa in her thoughts that she did not hear the door to her apartments open. When Jon spoke her name from just a few feet behind her chair, she jumped up and whirled around so quickly that, had she been holding her quill in her hand then, she surely would have dropped it and caused it to stain more than just her paper.

Jon stepped a few paces back. "Sorry," he said.

"No, that's all right," Sansa replied once her heart had begun to descend from her throat. "I did ask you to come, after all, and I'm sorry to wake you, but thank you anyway."

Jon shook his head. "I was awake already," he answered.

Sansa sat down, and Jon followed her lead. "Are you all still well enough?" he asked, and Sansa nodded and shifted her chair almost imperceptibly toward her inkpot, which was situated at the end of the table opposite from Jon.

"I thought we should send Bran a raven about all of this as quickly as we can," she said, "so that it gets to Winterfell before the raven your aunt sends."

Jon nodded at once. "Of course," he said, looking slightly sheepish. "I had thought of it last night, but it slipped my mind after I awoke."

Sansa shook her head. "I should have thought of it before," she replied. "But I thought to make it as short as we can for now so that our ravens will fly more quickly and so we can copy it enough times. We could send a longer letter later, written in our encryption, that would include instructions for Lord Manderly and Lord Davos about the councils and the – the marriage preparations, just in case Bran has his terrors again and needs to go to the godswood."

Jon nodded slowly. "It's a good plan," he said. He and Sansa turned then to the papers set out on Sansa's table. They spent the next hour and a quarter composing and copying their brief missive to Bran. Sansa, to whom Jon usually deferred when wording letters about particularly personal matters, composed most of the message with some input from Jon within the first half-hour. Between them, they remembered to include instructions for Bran to pass on their greetings to Lady Manderly – a reference to Sansa's direwolf, Lady, which was one of the terms the three had agreed to include in all of their letters to each other – as well as to should have the servants begin preparing three dozen barrels of Winterfell's finest blackberry mead and six dozen white roses for the wedding ceremony. The mention of the number three before the number six signified the three living and three gone of the six children raised by Eddard and Catelyn Stark in Winterfell, and together with the reference to Lady would assure Bran that the message was genuine.

Once the message had been composed, Sansa and Jon spent the remaining time copying her draft three times in their best imitations of scribes' writing, one for each raven. Finally, all three letters were finished and imprinted with the seals of Houses Stark and Targaryen, and Sansa and Jon silently headed for the rookery. They reached it during the gray period before dawn and stood at the battlements of the tower atop which it was perched until their three ravens had disappeared into the distance.

"Will you breakfast now?" Jon asked her on their way down the fifteen flights of stairs that separated the top of the tower from the floor that held the household's breakfast rooms, and Sansa nodded. The Red Keep boasted twenty times the occupants at any given time that Winterfell did, and at least twice again as much noise, which meant that after two days there, she had already learned to value the relative quiet of the early morning hours. So had Jon, who accompanied her in silence. The thought occurred to Sansa, who had almost forgotten about the events of the prior nights in her focus on finishing Bran's message with Jon, that beginning in just a few weeks, they must descend the steps at Winterfell together every morning from the upstairs hall that contained the lord's and lady's chambers. She paused for half a second so that she fell a good pace behind Jon for the lion's share of the way to the lower halls.

Then another thought made her stride to catch up with him on the last staircase. "Jon," she said, "should we not meet in my solar again after breakfast to write again to Bran?"

Jon tilted his head. "Yes, I suppose so," he replied and reached up to rub the back of his neck. "It will take long enough to get through the last bit, at least on my part."

Sansa knew that it would indeed take long enough for them to both compose and encrypt their message, but she shook her head anyway. "Better that," she said, "than another private audience with your aunt."

Jon began to grimace, but stopped midway. "Let her try to have one, then," he said. "We are working on matters of state and cannot be disturbed."

Sansa had seen that gleam in his eyes on the rare occasions when Bran had convinced Jon to join himself and Sansa at dice games or chess in one of their solars and inform some particularly annoying lord or other that the three of them were engaged in important matters of state and could not see him. A chuckle burst out of her before she could stop it, although she did manage to muffle it with one hand.

"So we are," she said, and one corner of Jon's mouth twisted upward as they took the last few steps.

However, no sooner had they entered the breakfast room than two of the lords from the Stormlands contingent that had arrived just the prior day asked to speak to Jon. The three men ended up seating themselves two tables over from Sansa, who had waved Jon off before he could so much as begin to ask if she preferred he stay with her; for, after all, Lucas Mazin was only a few yards away. She had only gotten halfway through her second scone, however, when she looked up to see the queen and Tyrion Lannister approaching her table. Tyrion, after the greetings had been exchanged, asked politely if they could join her, and Sansa assented just as politely, although the servants were already sweeping in her direction with platters of food. No sooner had they finished serving Daenerys and Tyrion than the queen immediately began to discuss plans for Sansa and Jon's betrothal feast, which she had scheduled for seven days hence. Sansa saw Jon stand to leave his own table and managed to slide him an apologetic look. He nodded but raised his eyebrows just high enough for Sansa not to mistake the look, and Sansa responded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Jon nodded again and turned to depart with the Stormlands lords, and Sansa thanked the heavens that he had been able to escape the room. If he had not, Sansa thought, he might have excused himself to ride Rhaegal again had he heard the queen casually asking her Hand how many bottles of strawberry wine could be had at a week's notice. As it was, Sansa spent the next hour and a half forcing herself to assure the queen that, even though the strawberry wine was now out of season, they could make up any lack of it with the in-season blackberry and raspberry wines, which the guests would surely enjoy just as much as they would the strawberry vintage; that Northern boar meat could complement pigeon and rice if seasoned correctly; and that any baker who could construct a six-foot-tall cake in the shape of a dragon could surely make a shorter one in the shape of a direwolf.

By the time the servants had removed her dishes, Sansa felt the beginnings of a searing headache. She stood up with a mind to make for her solar and some tea and Bran's letter, but Tyrion stopped her on her way out of the room and asked to speak to her privately. Much as Sansa wished not to, she assented. For one thing, potentially refusing meetings with both the queen and her Hand would raise all the wrong questions; and for another, Sansa would far rather deal with the latter than the former at the moment, despite her trepidation at the possible directions their conversation might take. After all, she had not spoken to Tyrion at any particular length – save for their discussions about battles and strategies at their war councils with Jon and the queen, during the White Walkers' invasion – since her flight from King's Landing so many years ago.

Soon Sansa found herself wandering through the palace gardens with Tyrion and their guards – one of the Hand's personal servants from Casterly Rock, one from the queen's household, and young Rodrik Hornwood, who had taken over Sansa's guard duty for the day from Lucas Mazin. Tyrion managed to find one of the few paths she had not taken through the gardens during her previous time at the Red Keep, for which Sansa was grateful. She was even more grateful when she discovered that their current path led over a granite bridge that spanned a lovely lily pond and glimmered black and silver in the morning sunlight.

Tyrion – for Sansa could not think of him as her husband, even former husband – stopped in the middle of the bridge and dragged himself atop a ledge that sat perhaps two feet up the wall and was flanked by two wide, curved slabs. Sansa had to examine it more closely before she realized that the side of the bridge jutted out for perhaps another two feet above the ledge to form a bench built into the bridge wall itself. She did not sit, however. Instead, she rested her elbows on top of the wall and stared at the lilies bobbing in their pads. Tyrion stood up on the seat of the bench, taking care not to step on the pile of pebbles that sat against its back – no doubt the work of some bored grounds servant or the mischievous son of one of the castle's inhabitants or visitors – and imitated her gesture. He glanced quickly to his left, and Sansa saw a smaller pile of pebbles resting against his left elbow.

"Lady Stark," he said, "I once told myself that you might survive us Lannisters yet, and here you are." That made Sansa surprised enough to turn and meet his eyes, and they crinkled as he grinned at her, and she noticed how many new wrinkles time, battle, and more wine had added to his face since she had last looked upon it, back when she had been his wife.

"If I were as much a gambling man as I am a drinking man," Tyrion continued, "I would say you owe me a glass of wine for proving me right."

"And any gambling man in Westeros would have called you a drunken fool for saying it in the first place," retorted Sansa. She bit the tip of her tongue to contain her tone but did not apologize.

Tyrion looked closely at her for a moment, then turned and picked a dull white pebble off the top of the rail. "Let them stop at drunken, and they would be correct," he said, "but no more am I a fool than my father was humble or my nephew sane." He squinted into the distance for some time before flinging the stone out over the water, where it landed neatly between two lily pads and disappeared from sight. Sansa watched the ripples spread to within a yard or two of the bridge before petering out.

"Target practice," said Tyrion as he chose another pebble, for Sansa had turned to raise her eyebrow at him. "It keeps my aim sharp if I'm in a tight corner and have to make do for something to throw, even if it's only a wine goblet." He winked as the pebble landed squarely in the center of a lily pad that had been floating a little more freely than the others.

"You should have brought wine goblets, then," answered Sansa, who had turned to watch the stone's flight, but already her voice had lost its edge.

Tyrion tut-tutted at her as he tiptoed to reach a third pebble. "Lady Sansa," he gasped in mock reproach, "if you think me such a strong and well-prepared warrior, have you not heard that my lack of exploits on the battlefield is matched only by the number and greatness of my exploits off of it? My friends are of far greater use to me on the battlefield than I to them. In an ale house, however – " He heaved the pebble to his greatest distance yet, then turned to raise an imaginary wine glass to Sansa.

For a moment, Sansa remembered Tyrion saluting her in a similar way, back in their chambers when she had been his terrified young bride and he the drunken groom who had refused to bed her. The memory, which had caused her to cringe so many times, now brought a small smile to her lips. Before she was aware of it, she had stooped to pick up a pebble off the surface of the bench. She squinted at a group of pads a few yards away and aimed her pebble carefully before tossing it a foot wide of her mark.

Sansa grimaced and turned to see Tyrion laughing beside her, but she merely stooped again to pick up two more pebbles. She held one out to him, and he nodded his thanks to her. He threw first, but this time Sansa threw farther. Tyrion grinned as if he had not had this much fun since his last visit to an alehouse.

"You must have had a good master teaching you to throw your daggers," he remarked as he reached for yet another pebble. "You made your adjustment quickly." Sansa merely nodded, but she shifted her gaze in Tyrion's direction when she sensed him halt his next throw.

"I should have thought to have you taught to wield some sort of weapon myself, Lady Stark," he said, his Lannister blue eyes boring into her own. "But I made a mistake I do not often make: I underestimated your willingness to fight if given a weapon. For that, I make my apology."

It took a few moments for Sansa to narrow her widened eyes back to their normal state. Once she had, Tyrion tossed his pebble half-heartedly, and both of them heard the distinctive plop of it hitting the water only a few feet away from them.

"I realize, of course," Tyrion continued, "that it is an odd mistake to apologize for of the many I made on your behalf. I might have been expected, for instance, to lead by asking your forgiveness for marrying you without your consent, even at my father's behest – " he grabbed a particularly large stone before Sansa had realized he had done so, and heaved it with unusual vigor straight into the middle of one of the smaller lily pads, making it sink at once – "or for failing to protect you from him, or my nephew, or my sister, or every other member of my entire damned family." He sank yet another pad with yet another of the larger stones and paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. "Or, perhaps, for being half-wit enough to ignore you to the point where I, with all of my efforts to protect you, pushed you further into my sister's cage." He rested his chin on the railing and stared downstream to where the lily pads all blended into a haze of green against the sky, and sighed. Sansa in turn stared at him.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Tyrion continued. "The cruelty of my family did more to prepare you for life outside the Red Keep than my feeble attempts at compassion ever did. Had I seen the wisdom of using those feeble attempts to prepare you more kindly than did my monster father or my mad nephew or any of the rest of them, you may not have fallen in with the other monsters." He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. "Had it not been for my folly, perhaps you would have been able to avoid the things that befell you later, and that is one of the larger regrets of my life, such as a man like me can afford to have them."

Sansa finally turned to face him in full then. "You and I both know you are capable of feeling honest regrets, Tyrion," she said softly. Her tongue surprised her by leaving out his title. "If you were not capable of it, you would not have had an annulment petition smuggled to the High Septon before you left Westeros." That drew Tyrion's eyes to hers abruptly, although the surprise left them after a few moments.

"Nor do you believe any more than I do," Sansa continued, "that your family's monstrosities were better for me than your kindnesses. If I did not learn from either until much later on, it was my own fault. You had no part in it except that your mad nephew pointed to you right before the death he richly deserved and made you a prisoner so that I was left without your protection. By different logic, one could say that I was the guiltier of us because you accidentally left me to fall in with monsters, but I deliberately left you with them in prison and at court while I fled the Landing." She picked up another especially large stone and flung it as far as she could in her turn.

"It was the best thing you could have done by far, Lady Sansa," said Tyrion, and Sansa had to turn her head because his voice had lowered so. The wrinkles around his eyes had deepened even more in the high morning sun, and so had the wrinkles around his mouth. They made his expression look mournful, and Sansa was mildly surprised to see the same twinge of sorrow reflected in his eyes. He seemed unwilling to speak further, so she replied softly, "I know," and turned to face the water again.

"Believe me or not, I still felt guilty over it after I left," she admitted, "especially when I heard you had been sentenced to die, and then later on – once I realized just how much you had protected me from when I was too stupid to be properly grateful for it." She turned to look him square in the eyes again. "I appreciate your kindness now more than I ever did before. You were my truest friend in King's Landing – whether or not you can afford to regret it."

Tyrion's mournful gaze softened just a bit. "That says all one ever need know about the Landing, if I was the truest friend you knew there," he replied. Sansa shrugged in agreement.

"Still," she said, "I am sorry, Tyrion. I am sorry that I did not realize how true a friend and protector you were to me, and I am sorry that I treated you with less gratefulness than you deserved."

The sadness and crinkles returned to Tyrion's face, and he shook his head. "No, let me have the regrets this time, since we have agreed I can afford them," he replied. "I was not as true a protector as I should have been, and you deserved a better friend and certainly a better husband."

His gaze grew softer, and she recognized the look he gave her then. It was the same look he had given her in the throne room of the Red Keep, when he had helped her up after stopping Ser Meryn Trant from beating her; the same look he had given her again in her chambers not long before their wedding, when he had assured her he would never harm her; the same look he had given her when they were alone in the same chambers on their wedding night, when he had promised never to share her bed without her consent.

Sansa nodded tightly and tossed another pebble into the water as Tyrion continued. "Now comes a regret I truly cannot afford to have," he said, "which is to regret of boasting that I have the gift of being an excellent judge of humans. For instance, I understand that my queen is a bit on the stubborn side." He ignored the look Sansa gave him as he tossed his own pebble into the stream immediately after hers.

"I know," he continued, "that her methods run on the, shall we say, blunt and ham-fisted side of things, and I assure you that they often drive me to drink. In fact, after she disregarded my advice to give you and Lord Snow a bit more time and – temperance – before ordering you about into the sept, or in this case godswood, I drank perhaps the most I have drunk since the day you and I entered the sept together. That having been said, she has in spite of herself given you a better man than any I have met in my lifetime, save perhaps for your father."

Sansa snapped her head around to face Tyrion in spite of herself at the mention of her father. Tyrion, however, merely nodded. "I spent some months with him when he first went to the Wall, just after you left Winterfell," he told her, "and although he was only a boy, he was a thousand times nobler than my own nephews even then. The times I have spent with him during and after our battles have proven him just as noble, even more so, and time has given him a certain wisdom and humility he lacked back then." The wrinkles came back to his face, but this time his lips were turned upward instead of down, and his whole face softened.

"What he does not lack," Tyron said, "is kindness and gentleness, and if I know him at all, I know he will be at his kindest and gentlest when he is with you. He will do you far more good than I ever did." He held Sansa's gaze for a few moments, then bent slowly to retrieve a sparkling gray pebble from the seat of the bench. He took his time aiming it just so before he threw it into the water, but when he turned back to Sansa, he was grinning.

"If I may be so bold," he remarked, his tone much more lighthearted, "I think as well that you will be good for him. You may pull him out of those brooding spells of his from time to time." He winked at her before leisurely tossing another pebble into the stream.

"Of course," he said the stone finished its lazy arc out over the water, "you can always sheep-shift my bed if he proves me wrong."

Sansa closed her eyes and blushed at the memory. When she turned to look at Tyrion again, she matched his smile for a moment. Then a cloud passed over the sun, and she turned her face upwards to regard it. She was thankful it had come along just then, for several moments passed before she felt it safe to regard Tyrion once more.

"But," the Hand continued gaily, "I have the utmost faith that he will not. In fact – again, if I were a wagering man – I should feel quite confident in wagering an entire case of Her Grace's not-yet-acquired strawberry wine on it, and a dozen casks of Dornish Red besides." He sighed and bowed dramatically, then clambered off the bench.

"Off to procuring more yet-to-be-procured goods, I suppose," Tyrion said, which made Sansa's lips twitch upward again. He offered Sansa his arm, which she automatically took. When they reached the end of the bridge, he bowed again.

"Chin up, Lady Stark," he said. "You survived us, as I said you would. If you and your lord are not careful, one of these days you may be in great danger of thriving as well." He turned, leaving a speechless Sansa in his wake, and clapped in the direction of the servants who had accompanied them.

"Ser Delyn! Ser Toros!" he exclaimed, and his guards stepped smartly to his side. "I believe this fine day calls for some wine back at the Keep, do you not agree?"

 **Author's note: Tyrion Lannister is wickedly fun to write. I hope you enjoyed him - and the rest of the chapter!**


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